AP's IT export grows 40-50% in H1

BANGALORE: Information Technology exports from Andhra Pradesh have grown by 40-50 per cent and crossed Rs 4,000 crore in the first half of the current financial year, officials said on Thursday.

During the April-September period, Andhra Pradesh has also attracted 58 new companies, said B V Naidu, director of Software Technology Parks of India, Bangalore and Hyderabad, on the sidelines of trade-show "Bangalore IT.in 2005".

The state achieved IT exports of Rs 8,270 crore in 2004-05 with 64.5 per cent growth rate. A total of 152 new software-exporting companies started operations in the state in the last fiscal. IT sector tops in the overall exports from the state with 45 per cent share of the total figure of Rs 19,552 crore.

Andhra Pradesh's IT secretary K Ratna Prabha said IT majors like Satyam, Wipro and TCS have identified Visakhapatnam as their tier-II location in the state, while Sharp is setting up a facility at Tirupati by December.

With spotlight on infrastructural woes in Bangalore, Andhra Pradesh is seeking to promote Hyderabad and tier-II cities in the state as IT and investment-friendly destinations and are wooing firms to set up shops there.

But Andhra Pradesh officials don't want to give an impression that they want to lure companies out of Bangalore.

Andhra Pradesh's Advisor (IT) and CEO of A P Invest, C S Rao said: "We are not trying to compete. We know the share of Karnataka in overall IT exports of the country, and our share. We are having healthy competition."

Andhra Pradesh has targeted Rs 69,000 crore in IT exports by 2009, and has aggressive plans on promotion and training manpower to achieve it, Prabha said.